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A new bridge linking annexed Crimea to the Russian mainland is the unlikely backdrop to a state-funded rom-com that has been compared to Soviet propaganda and panned by critics.
The sexually charged "Crimean Bridge: Made with Love!", Which opened in Russian theaters last week, was penned by Margarita Simonyan, head of the Kremlin-owned news channel RT.
The film, set during the construction of a $ 3.7-billion bridge that opened in May to condemnation of the West, focuses on the adventures of a nubile young archaeologist.
She finds herself pursued by a man who has come to Moscow to oversee the media coverage of the bridge.
The picture follows last year's state-funded "Crimea" action movie.
Director Tigran Keosayan, Simonyan's husband, has been quoted as saying, "We are a bunch of people."
play
The sexually charged "Crimean Bridge: Made with Love!", Which opened in Russian theaters last week, was penned by Margarita Simonyan, head of the Kremlin-owned news channel RT
(AFP / File)
But KinoPoisk, one such Russian aggregator, insists the reactions are real.
"This film turns out to be a strange hybrid of 'Crimea' and 'American Pie'," wrote Egor Belikov for the Afisha cultural guide.
"The bridge is like an iron phallus, now and forever inserted into the motherland into the body of this newly acquired peninsula," he said.
Critic Anton Dolin also panned the film but said the creators had at least managed to come up with a new genre – the "romantic-patriotic comedy".
Writing for the Meduza news site, he said the movie was "a rather weird time machine" transporting the viewer to the construction-based Soviet propaganda pictures of the 1930s.
Viewers 'bussed in'
"It's a pale imitation of Soviet propaganda efforts, but the political statesman Ekaterina Schulmann told AFP.
She said sales would be boosted by children and students in state institutions being brought to the movie en masse.
"That's how sales are achieved, but the sales are not the point – the point is to say that many people are watching this production and manufacturing some signs of success."
The film has taken a total of 44 million rubles ($ 667,000) since the end of last week, according to federal listings. Russian media reported a budget of 300 million rubles ($ 4.5 million).
Moscow's annexation of Crimea from Ukraine in 2014, following an anti-Russian uprising in Kiev, was widely popular at home but provoked outrage and sanctions from the US and US.
The film has also been criticized for its depiction of Crimean Tatars, a minority group under Stalin and rising up in Moscow, returned to the peninsula.
Some viewers, however, said they simply enjoyed the sun-soaked romance.
"We are not obligated to listen to your loud, depressive nonsense," Russian author Igor Maltsev wrote about the film.
"Normal people will go to watch a funny, good movie about summer and love."
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